But what about barking? Yesterday, I watched a movie called “How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog.” It was a good movie, not really much about a dog, but there was a dog that barked at night so the main character was always getting his sleep interrupted. He bought earplugs, and he pretended to plot the death of his neighbor’s dog.
I always said I didn’t want a little yippy dog because I can’t stand all that constant noise. Is your Yorkie going to keep you from getting along with your apartment or even house to house neighbors? Or is she going to drive you crazy with her endless noise?
My dog lets me know when he hears something outside, and he can sound ferocious, so he actually makes a good watchdog. At first he barked too much, but then just as I was starting to investigate ways to keep a dog from barking, he learned how to tone it down in a most interesting way!
Yorkies Are Smart
Yorkies are very intelligent animals. Mason didn’t listen to me when I told him to shush because he either thought he was protecting me or he got very excited about something, but then on our long walks, he learned from other animals to quieten down. How? Well, I’ll give you specific examples. Be Easy, a loving, friendly horse on our walking route, trots over to the fence when he sees us coming, and he actually rubs noses with Mason, down at the ground on his level, or if I pick Mason up, he nuzzles him and me at the same time.
At First…
At first, however, it wasn’t like that. Mason would bark from excitement, or I guess maybe “talking to” Be Easy, and as soon as he did, Be Easy would jerk his head up and away, as if he had been slapped. It was clear to me that Mason’s bark was a shock to him, and he didn’t like it, but I didn’t expect Mason to learn from it.
After it happened a couple of times though, and then when we met some cows who ambled interestedly over to their fence to touch noses with him, but their response was to back up when he lost it and barked at them, Mason’s barking got to be less and less often, and now he doesn’t bark at all when he meets new animals – cats, dogs, horses, cows – unless he doesn’t know what it is, like a big turtle that crawled up to lay eggs in our flower bed one day. He ran around barking at it from all sides. If we humans saw something we didn’t understand, we might be making a lot of commotion too! Turtles don’t show a lot of emotion, but I bet that one was terrified.
In Conclusion
All I can say is, if your Yorkie barks too much, remember that he can be trained, by you or by natural circumstances.